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About this lesson
Everyone has lots of personal stories - which ones should you share?
Quick reference
This Is Where Your Best Stories Have Been Hiding
You already have powerful stories — the challenge isn’t creating them, it’s recognizing and using them.
You Already Have Stories Worth Telling
- The biggest myth about storytelling: “I don’t have any stories.”
- In reality, your life is full of stories — conversations, problems solved, surprising moments, setbacks and wins.
- Often, casual conversations reveal great stories with all the right elements: setting, characters, emotion, conflict, and resolution.
Be an Editor, Not Just a Creator
- You don’t need to invent amazing stories — you just need to recognize the 1% that are worth sharing.
- Great storytellers are often great editors: they know how to spot what matters and leave the rest behind.
- Ask: Does this story have a message or lesson that will help my audience?
Even Imperfect Stories Make a Difference
- You don’t need a perfect story. In fact, even a flawed story is better than no story at all.
- Most presentations are dry, data-heavy, and forgettable — adding a simple story can immediately make yours stand out.
- Don’t overthink or over-polish. Just try telling the story — and improve it next time.
The Key Takeaway
- Your goal is to connect, not to be perfect.
- Start telling stories now. You can always refine and strengthen them later, but don’t wait for perfection.
- 00:04 The biggest misconception most people have about stories that they tell themselves.
- 00:09 I don't have any stories to tell.
- 00:12 I see this all the time when I'm working with groups of people on their public speaking skills, their storytelling skills.
- 00:18 Someone says, well, I don't have any stories.
- 00:20 This is all the data. I just have the slides.
- 00:23 And I said, OK, fine.
- 00:25 We take a coffee break.
- 00:27 We sit down and I just say, hey, how'd you get into this line of work?
- 00:31 Every single time, they have an interesting story.
- 00:37 And that story always has a setting and characters and problems and emotions and solutions and dialogue.
- 00:45 So you've heard me say it before. I'm going to say it again.
- 00:49 Stop telling yourself you don't have stories.
- 00:51 Your life is nothing but a series of stories.
- 00:56 What you've got to do is not become a brilliant creator of stories, but frankly, a better editor, and figure out what are the 99% of the stories in your life that aren't of interest to other people.
- 01:07 How do you put a spotlight, a focus on the 1% of stories that are going to be interesting to other people and have a lesson or a message that will be helpful to them?
- 01:18 That's the real key.
- 01:20 Here's something you're not going to hear from most instructors on storytelling.
- 01:26 I got to be careful about this.
- 01:27 Don't tell anyone I told you this.
- 01:28 But here's the thing.
- 01:31 Even bad stories work most of the time.
- 01:36 Why is that?
- 01:37 Why would you intentionally do something bad?
- 01:39 I'm not asking you to start off trying to tell a bad story, but what I mean by that is most presentations are so boring, so devoid of anything interesting, they don't have any stories.
- 01:53 That if you put in a story to flesh out a point, even if it's not well told, even if it's missing some details, even if it doesn't have the dialogue, and I'd love for you to have dialogue.
- 02:05 It's still going to be so much better than the person who spoke before you and the person who spoke after you in most situations.
- 02:14 So I say this to motivate you to try.
- 02:18 Don't wait until you have the perfect story.
- 02:22 Don't write, rewrite, rewrite and treat this like it's a perfect piece of art that's got to be polished for 20 years.
- 02:31 If you have some story elements that relate to the message you're trying to convey to your audience, go ahead, put it out there.
- 02:39 Something beats nothing.
- 02:42 Most presentations have nothing.
- 02:45 They're just boring data dumps.
- 02:48 So a story, any story, even a story that's not told very well is going to be so much better than nothing.
- 02:58 So keep that in mind.
- 03:00 Don't wait till you have the perfect story.
- 03:02 Put a story out and we can always make it better the next time.
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